Massey-Peabody Predictions: NFL Championship Games

Wharton professor Cade Massey and Las Vegas sports analyst Rufus Peabody project the winner of each playoff game based on the season-to-date statistics that best predict future performance, home-field advantage and chance (see Massey-Peabody.com for details). Here are their predictions for this week’s NFL Championship games:

Denver 31.3
New England 23.6

Seattle 23.8
San Francisco 17.3

Denver advances to the Super Bowl in 74.2% of Massey-Peabody simulations. Seattle advances in 70.9% of the time.

If you’re looking ahead to the Super Bowl and prefer a game that’s essentially a toss up, the best possible pairings are San Francisco (minus-0.69 points) vs. New England and Seattle (plus-0.45 points) vs. Denver. Seattle would currently be expected to beat New England by 4.39 points and Denver holds a 4.15-point edge over San Francisco.

In the Massey-Peabody NFL rankings, the Broncos are 8.8 points better than a league average team on a neutral field, Seattle plus-8.3, San Francisco 4.3 and New England 3.6.

The key to Denver’s strength is their performance in the model’s most important statistic, play-success rate (the percentage of plays that become first downs or touchdowns or effectively set-up the next down). The Broncos are more than twice as strong here next-best remaining team, the Patriots.

But what’s more surprising is that Denver’s defense limits the play success of opponents slightly better than even the mighty Seahawks. The big difference between the two defenses is Seattle’s far superior defensive efficiency (yards allowed divided by points allowed). In fact, Denver’s defensive efficiency ranking is by far the worst among the surviving teams.

Overall, the AFC Championship game features two clubs far stronger on the offensive side of the ball while the NFC Championship game is a battle of defensive-dominant squads. So no matter who wins on Sunday, a contrast in styles on Super Bowl Sunday is guaranteed.

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